I always imagine Newcastle as a place where authority is regarded suspiciously. A place where mild colonial boys and girls celebrate the myth of egalitarianism, admire and practise stoicism, and where conversations are peppered with healthy doses of self-deprecation and irreverence.

When you hear about the innovative engineering feat of an unlicensed bloke towing a boat via a mobility scooter on the Pacific Highway, it's perfectly normal to simultaneously hope it didn't happen in Newcastle and that it did happen in Newcastle.

It's instantaneously ridiculously dangerous and hilarious.

Same when people run a Facebook campaign to celebrate and preserve a waterfront phallic-shaped tower that reeked of urine.

Or when a rock falls on a road from a cliff and stays there for years.

Or when the council boss decides to make a point to show those uppity smarty pants at Ausgrid - with all their concerns about worker safety - who really runs this joint. Show that dominance by changing a street width resulting in a power pole being on the wrong side of the gutter.

Checkmate, mate.

And then the pole gets its own Twitter handle. Very Newcastle.

Of course - according to non-Novocastrian standards - the pole is on the wrong side of the gutter, but we're a smart, creative, innovative, sustainable, vibrant, evolving city and sometimes you have to lead from the front or something about some things.

But it's clear that a sense of humour about the place and its inhabitants is not universal.

The Herald Letters page has been showered with responses to Frayed, and half-a-dozen of those letters have not seen the funny side of this dramedy created and written by Australian comedian and former Merewether resident Sarah Kendall, who also stars in it.

Kendall's character Sammy bails on her Newcastle upbringing and revitalises herself in London as a plummy-voiced pearl-clutcher now identifying as "Simone".

Her husband suddenly dies while in the company of a sex worker and it immediately becomes apparent the lifestyle of fancy living and exclusive private schools for her two teenage kids is built on a house of cards whose foundations are lies and no money.

Unable to face others - or herself - in her social circle with the reality of the situation, she returns to her Mum's place in Newcastle.

She tells her snooty kids Newcastle is "sort of" Sydney.

Just on being "sort of" Sydney, how'd you feel about P.J. Keating carrying Albo's very fast train (VFT) torch on radio last week? Keating was spruiking that Newcastle could become a satellite suburb of Sydney with a VFT.

Every time I hear "VFT to Newcastle", another part of me dies.

Frayed is set in the late '80s, before the internet. What a different world it was, and what a different Newcastle it was.

Some correspondents took exception to Frayed, with Grant Agnew of Cooper Plains (Letters, 19/10) calling it a downmarket Seachange and writing "swearing is not funny and Newcastle deserves better".

I always thought the phrase "Newcastle deserves better" was exclusively owned and operated by our state member.

Newcastle's Suzanne Martin (Letters, 24/10) let her fury be known, writing that "all other episodes should be cancelled ... the language was quite demeaning of most Novocastrians and painted us in such a bad light."

We should only be painted in a good light. Like a Jeffrey Smart canvas.

Former Novocastrian and now Melbourne domiciled correspondent Phillip Corbett (Short Takes 25/10) did not take kindly to his hometown being "depicted as a dysfunctional backwater populated by stereotypical dim-witted bogans".

Frayed aint Catalyst.

Charlestown's Mark Fetscher (Short Takes 29/10) wrote "ABC TV really did a hatchet job on Newcastle ...a deliberate attack on the image and people of Newcastle. It completely failed to capture the culture of Newcastle."

What is the culture of Newcastle? What would happen if we captured it? Would it get bail?

Denise Lindus Trummel from Mayfield didn't take issue with the show (Letters, 30/10).

But as a regular at Newcastle Ocean Baths, she did wish the production would have left behind the "fancy shmancy shower installation."

Keep up the advocacy for a better NOB, Ms Lindus Trummel. It's working.

And then another Mayfield correspondent, David Quinn (Short Takes, 1/11) asks succinctly "DRAMA or documentary? I'm aFrayed it's a comedy."

Well put, Mr Quinn.

I hope you have the last word, but I imagine, given we are only halfway through Frayed on ABC TV, there'll be more outrage populating the Letters page in the next few weeks.

To ABC TV and Sarah Kendall, thanks for Frayed.

It's a hoot.